Arab League summit split by turmoil in Syria and Egypt

Little to celebrate as divided Arab League meets for 25th anniversary summit in Kuwait

LAST UPDATED AT 09:06 ON Wed 26 Mar 2014

WHILE much of the world’s attention is focused on Crimea and the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, Middle Eastern eyes will turn to the 25th annual summit of the Arab League, which opened this morning in Kuwait City.

The summit comes at a critical time for the 22 member states, with growing tensions over the deteriorating situation in Egypt, the ongoing civil war in Syria and allegations of Qatari support for extremist groups throughout the Gulf region.

“Everybody considers the summit exceptional because of ongoing conflicts in the Arab region,” said Deputy Secretary-General Ahmad bin Halli.

“In four decades of covering the Middle East I cannot remember the Arab world being as multilaterally fractured as it is today,” he said. “Arabs are trapped under a dense and complex cat’s cradle of ideological and sectarian differences.”

The diplomatic fallout from Qatar’s perceived support of the Muslim Brotherhood and other extreme Islamist groups operating in the region is particularly divisive. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE all recalled ambassadors from the Qatari capital, Doha, ahead of this week’s summit.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are likely to side with Egypt in arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood represents a fundamental threat to regional security. Qatar is likely to oppose them.

The war in Syria is, if anything, an even more divisive issue. Syria “has accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of seeking to undermine the country”, Butt says, while “Saudi Arabia and Qatar are supporting different factions of the Syrian opposition”.

Syria’s seat at the summit has so far remained empty, Al Jazeera reports. Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq have opposed proposals by other member states that the opposition Syrian National Council should be invited to represent the country.
A decision on that matter, at least, is expected today.

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Submitted by Les Barrie on March 26, 2014 - 12:42pm.

The wests no 1 priority must be to sourse alternative methods of energy,the sooner we do the sooner we can build a fence around the middle east and let these animals,fanatics and dictators butcher each other without their poison inflecting the rest of us.